Cost of a Poem

How much is the cost of a poem
I wonder
But wondering not allowed, I know
It's Zero
Z-E-R-O

It costs nothing. It values nothing
Ain't nobody gonna buy your poem hon
For there are thousands of others
And no one's gonna wanna read this shit

But I could approximate
It costs fifteen bucks.
Cost of the cigarette that induces it
Plus the taxes

Sitting on your ageing ass
Staring into semi lit April night
Alone in the balcony
Of a suburban one bedroom

Smoking and thinking of the
Many many thoughts you missed
Living an ordinary life like this
You decide to not deny yourself, from being who you truly be

And write a poem at the end of the day
But does it matter
When there are thousands like you
Poetry ain't ever gonna get you a buck

You're gonna be sitting on your ageing ass
Watching the fifteen bucks go up in smoke
Alone and denying yourself further
Don't know from what exactly though

So S-T-O-P
Already
Cease this relentless embarrassment
Quit. Leave it. White out

Sunglasses

Can't remember where I kept my sunglasses
Last I recall seeing them in the sun in the sand
Sun and sand, glorious, golden
After that, I don't know where they went
Think I borrowed my brother's
Maroon brown tinted aviators
For us, big and wide faced progeny
And the sand had scratched the glass minutely
Through which I saw lines in the sky
But after that, not a clue
Also I had my own very own, bluish one, perhaps
Bought with first salaries
Alibis for virile getaways with girlfriends
To cloudy resorts, filled with wild Jacaranda

Now I think,
At my semi ripe age of thirty and one
That I should wear my sunglasses, only all the time
While chasing cabs
On walks replacing siesta
In evenings, while walking out a store
They won't complement me, for I am ordinary
Dangerously ordinary and pale
Further, I wear flats and loose clothes to hide flab
But still, if I wear them sunglasses, all the time,
Would appear that at least,
I tried to be a cross between myself
And something posh
For now, for me, this is enough, just about 

History

Erosion of memory is an indispensable part of healing. One forgets, one gets past, one heals. When she was younger, she didn't believe she would one day be able to comfortably forget. In the angst of young and unrequited love, she strongly believed that one actually never forgot anything, only with time learned compulsively to get by. But as she grew older, it got real. It was actually possible to forget. And it wasn't necessarily an active activity. Memories faded quite automatically, passively, quietly. And before she consciously took note, many chapters of  her life had been lost. Suddenly she felt possessive about her past, however lackluster that had been. She felt unfairly dealt with, after all.

It felt so recent anyway. Once she started scraping off the surface, she counted with her fingers the number of years that had past, since. Not many. At least, not that many. But her slight wrinkles told her a different story, that she's older now. With a totally different set of  priorities. But then again, when did this happen? When did she get so old? She felt as if she would undo the Venetian blinds in her cubicle and see him on the other side. Through the glass, he felt immediate. He suddenly erupted from the past and felt so so so damn close in time and in space. Like he had jumped out of that continuum into this.

But the truth was far from this midday hallucination. He was nowhere around. You know how actual physical raw time space work. Once someone has passed, someone had passed. They ain't coming back for good. That said, how can memories be unfair. How can they self destruct? And so easily. Feeble recollections of events haunted her, grazed on her mind and taunted her. And she couldn't remember any further, any deeper. They had been so particularly staunch about keeping no memorabilia, there was nothing to cling to. How sometimes she jumped into the traps she herself had built.

Probably this doesn't make much sense. But she couldn't understand how she could totally completely absolutely forget a man who had loved her and who she had almost loved? Subconsciously she thought of the others like him in her life, and had nightmares about them. But never anything on him. How strange. How quietly he exited, never to reappear again. So much history gradually decayed in her mind and she didn't even realize except for now.

If she undid the blinds, just now, would he still be there though. She pondered.